Whether you are working on a new brochure, email campaign, business card design or web page for your small business, you need to include an effective Call To Action (CTA).

What is a CTA?

A CTA is a phrase that encourages your reader or website visitor to take an immediate action. The graphic on the right depicts several Call to Action buttons found recently on the Internet.

Creating an Effective CTA

An effective CTA gives your audience a reason to interact with your organization. When creating a CTA, put yourself in your reader’s or visitor’s mindset. They are probably thinking “What’s In It For Me?”

Effective CTAs include a specific request, usually in the form of an action verb, with an added sense of urgency. Add words like “Now” and “Today” to your CTA.

Some examples:

Watch now

Buy now

Subscribe today

Offer expires April 30

Order now to receive a free gift

Register today and save 30%

Call today

Download now

An effective CTA offers a specific customer benefit, usually something of value, in exchange for the action. Tell them what benefit they will get by clicking the call-to-action:

Free information

A discount

Free shipping

An exclusive opportunity

An e-book

An effective CTA takes readers and web visitors directly to the promised benefit. It is especially important that CTAs on your website take visitors to an exact web page that specifically delivers the promised benefit.

Creating a Winning Brand

The success of a small business relies, in part, on the company’s ability to create a winning brand. In order to be successful, you must create a memorable reputation — and part of that reputation lies in your ability to successfully brand your company, products and services.

The idea of branding is not new. Branding dates back to 2000 B.C. when inscriptions on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs indicate that cattle were branded. What has changed is how you create a winning brand in today’s online-intense marketplace.

Coca-Cola has been called the world’s most iconic beverage. The company consistently and very deliberately, uses their trademark red, the distinctive Coke glass bottle figure, their script logo, and targeted slogans. Below is one of their latest videos. When I posted this, the video was less than 2 hours old and had 306 views. It will be interesting to see how many views it has when you read this.

Free Branding Assessment Tool

Coke’s consistent branding has resulted in a strong consumer following. You can do the same with your branding.

To learn how to brand your products, services and company as consistently as Coke, start with a quick branding assessment. Click here to download Reciprocate’s free branding assessment tool. You’ll also receive an exclusive offer to receive a free company branding of your Constant Contact emails. But hurry, the Constant Contact branding offer expires Feb. 29, 2012.

How to Market to your Customers’
Pain Points

Once you have identified the Pain Points, you can identify the solutions available from your product/service.

In your marketing messages, reinforce that you understand what your customers really need. Illustrate or demonstrate their pain point and how your product/service can take away their pain. Clearly define the Pain Point that your product/service is addressing.

When you market your products or service directly to solve those pain points, your customers will respond.

Are you getting the most marketing “BANG”
from your website?

Your website is the center of your online universe. One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is not engaging with their website visitors — an easy mistake to make – and, luckily, it’s just as easy to correct.

Here’s a quick 4-question self-evaluation quiz to see if your website is working effectively that includes tips and simple fixes.

Website Effectiveness Quiz

Does each page offer a “Call to Action”?Encourage interaction with website visitors by asking them to do something – such as “Click here,” “Call today,” “Learn more.” Then hyperlink the Call to Action to the appropriate page or action.

Do you have contact information on each page?Website visitors move fast. If they can’t find what they are looking for quickly, they will leave your website and move on to the competition. Make it easy to reach you. Include a hyperlinked email address for added ease.

Are you capturing email addresses of web visitors?Now that visitors found you on the internet, you need a way to stay in touch. Offering a white paper or email newsletter subscription is a great way to capture email addresses so you can continue to market to your website visitors, even after they’ve left your website. Constant Contact offers an inexpensive, easy-to-install website tool that can turn visitors into an email contact list. Click here to learn more.

Is anyone out there?

Have you ever wondered if anyone is visiting your website? What if I told you there was a free way to find out not only if your website was being visited but what pages visitors were reading and how long they spent on your website? What if there was also a way to find out how they found your website i.e. did they click on a link or did they type words into a search engine? Wouldn’t you like to know what words they searched for to find your website? What if you could even tell how they navigated through your website? The answers to all these questions are available for free via Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a web analytics solution — a free service provided by Google. By placing a few lines of hidden code into your website, you will have access to data that will provide insight into your website visitors. You can use this information to decide if your website is actually helping you market your company, products and services; which keywords you should be emphasizing in your social media and marketing efforts; and maybe if it’s time to invest in a new website.

How do you know if you have Google Analytics installed?

If you don’t know if you have Google Analytics installed on your website, ask your web developer. If it is not currently installed, most developers will add it to your site for a nominal fee. Reciprocate can help you find a web developer if you don’t have one.

The Google Analytics team recently sent out a newsletter with some interesting industry research that we’d like to share with you. Based on the “Site Metrics” chart below, it appears that , on average, visitors are spending almost 30 seconds less on each website than they were a year ago. What does this mean to you? You may need to re-think your website — possibly use fewer words and more photos to grab the attention of your visitors and to tell your story faster.

Even more telling is how visitors are finding websites in general. Take a look at the “Avg Time on Site” in chart 2.2 below. It would appear that visitors who arrive via organic search and paid advertising (CPC Search) are spending more time on websites, while visitors who are reaching websites either directly or via referral links are spending less time. Is this because visitors coming directly and from referrals already know about the company so they don’t need to spend as much time on the website or are they less interested in what they find? Something to think about when you look at your website’s Google Analytic statistics.

I hope this blog has inspired you to learn more about your website statistics. Google Analytics may be confusing to entrepreneurs and small businesses. Reciprocate would be happy to provide a free Google Analytics consultation. Simply send an email to us at info@ReciprocateLLC.com. We’ll help you decipher the traffic to your website and give you some ideas on how to use this information to increase your sales and positively grow your bottom line.

Pick a Color, Any Color

Your brand is reflected in your company colors. When you are first forming your company, you need to decide the colors you want associated with your company, products and services. Best Buy uses blue and yellow; Coca-Cola relies on red and white; Bachmans, a Twin Cities florist, uses purple and lime green. Which colors represent your company? What colors do you like? What image are you trying to portray?

If website visitors aren’t converting to customers, changing the color of your website might not be the solution. If your car stopped working, would you paint it a different color to make it work?

If you aren’t happy with how your website is performing, ask a third party to review your website with you or hire a website consultant. Does the text answer or raise questions? Are the pages laid out logically? Where are the calls to action? Is it easy to read and uncluttered?